Star is described by the world's most recognised blonde as a 'novelisation' of her life and Pamela Anderson's first foray into literature certainly reads like her hastily sketched autobiography. It is big on Pammy's sanitised softer side: her pets; her gay friends; her favourite grandpa. It is short on the nastier bits you might want to read: the plastic surgery; the fights with bad boy rocker Tommy Lee; her battle with Hep C.

A waitress doing a second job in a hair salon to make ends meet, Star is discovered by talent scouts after appearing on a giant screen at a football match. Her rise is inexorable. Soon, she is on the front of every men's monthly, wearing little more than a smile.

Star becomes the pneumatic temptress of a popular TV series, Lifeguards Inc, where her offscreen dalliances with co-stars result in the film crew attaching a sign to her trailer: 'If this trailer's rocking, don't come knocking.'

Actually, there is not that much sex in Star, and some of it is stultifying: 'Then they changed places and she went down on Michael with the young man inside her'; some of it borders on the anatomical: 'The strange feel of his erection in her hand, flesh like velour wrapped around a bird bone.'

Star's social climb reads like a dark fairy tale, as if Cinderella hit the big time by working at a clip joint. Anyone can become ubiquitous, it appears. You just need dollops of silicone and a load of attitude from the wrong side of the tracks.

The Cinderella analogy works only so far. Star is more Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Star, like Tess, has succeeded due to her body and her mesmeric hold over men. The question is will Star/Pammy go the way of poor Tess? Unlikely. Anderson is cleverly cashing in until gravity does its worst.

Inevitably, given her commitments, Anderson didn't actually write the book. Eric Shaw Quinn is credited on the inside of the jacket as the wordsmith. The woman with the most famous fake breasts in the world is also a fake author. But should we expect more? Synthetic, saccharine and sexualised, Star is more than a novelisation of Pammy's life. It is Pammy.